By the time I hid away this silver, you had already been with me for years. I watched you grow from a tiny lit…
By the time I hid away this silver, you had already been with me for years. I watched you grow from a tiny little thing into a fine young man taller than I am. It seems "Little Coin" was a fitting nickname all along. Just like my strings of coins, you kept growing longer by the year.
Now that you are all grown, you need a proper name to match, just as I, Qian Duoduo, have one of my own. That day when you came to ask me about it, you said perhaps you should take the shopkeeper's surname and call yourself Qian Chizi. Rich enough by the sound of it, you said. Stubborn boy. Not a bit of flexibility in you. You never cared much for keeping accounts, and were always fonder of riding horses. Why insist on taking a name after me?
To my mind, Chi is a fine character, so I secretly wrote it down and tucked it beneath your pillow. Whether you ever found it, I couldn't say.
You were always saying your shopkeeper was too stingy with you, that your monthly wages were pitifully small. Hah. That only showed how green you still were. I was teaching you to save.
What I gave you was more generous than what you would have gotten anywhere else. It only looked like less in your hand because I had already set part of it aside for you. Money for sickness, money for a house, money for your old age. One must start saving early, so that money may in time make more money, and a man may go through life free of worry.
Enough. By the time you read this letter, I expect I will already be old, and you will have made a name for yourself. When that day comes, if fame is yours and this windfall has also fallen into your hands, remember to thank me properly for my foresight. And do not call me stingy ever again.
(Another sheet is covered edge to edge in cramped writing, recording Little Coin's monthly wages. The sum rises year by year, with many extra allowances added by the shopkeeper out of pocket, and the accounts continue on for a full hundred years to come.)